Pace Makes the Race Blogcast:
Try Handicapping Every Race the Same Way
A while back I was doing a private online coaching session with a new user of our software. We began with the player sharing his screen as he handicapped live races. In each race he walked me through the process of what he was doing and which horses he ultimately wound up betting. Then I would give him my assessment of the race.
After four or five races that did not result in a favorable outcome for the coachee, I asked him, “Is this how you handicapper every race?”
He said that it was and asked “Why?”
I explained that at no time during these races did I ever used my own handicapping; that all I had done was use his CORE APPROACH-the one he had taught me at the beginning of the session – but without his tweaks.
What I had observed was that in each race he began with the same core factors (in our software we call them handicapping objects) and precisely the same steps. The difference was that he, being an expert handicapper, had added little tidbits of information here and there that he felt had great importance in the race. (He really is an expert handicapper.)
For example, he tossed out one contender who had not had a race in the last 30 days and replaced him with another horse. In another race, he tossed a contender because the trainer had no wins at the track in the last four years. That particular trainer only had three starts and went off as an odds-on favorite.
Still another horse was added as a contender because he was trained by a leading trainer, had big numbers in his trainer stats, and looked unbeatable. Originally he did not qualify as a contender because he was a pronounced front runner in a race where the pace model pointed to closers (9 furlongs on the turf).
This was a perfect teaching environment because all three of those changes turned out to be wrong.
One of the contenders that he tossed won the race and paid $12.
The other contender that he removed, did not win the race, but by virtue of being very low odds would’ve made the race unplayable. Instead, by tossing him, the race became playable and he lost money that would have remained peacefully in his pocket without the change.
However, it was the contender he added in that third race that ruined his day. That horse, which did not fit the pace profile, and that his systematic approach had tossed out, went off as the odds on favorite and ran out of the money, fueling a big payoff by one of his contenders. By adding that contender, the race became unplayable and caused him to miss a big opportunity.
Watch the video for the rest of the story (and the point).
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See also: Why You Should Concentrate on the Handicapping Process
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